75 years for convicted rapist who attacked women weeks after parole

Julius Anderson, 63, has been sentenced to 75 years in prison after pleading guilty in three 2009 attacks on woman on the North and Northwest sides.

Julius Anderson, 63, has been sentenced to 75 years in prison after pleading guilty in three 2009 attacks on woman on the North and Northwest sides. (Cook County Sheriff's photo)

Steve SchmadekeTribune reporter

A serial rapist who was paroled in 2009 only to attack three women in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood within weeks of his release has been sentenced to 75 years in prison.

Cook County prosecutors wanted Julius Anderson committed as a sexually violent person in 2009 after he spent 30 years in prison for robbing two Northwestern students at gunpoint and raping a Rogers Park woman. Those attacks happened months after Anderson was released from prison in 1977 after serving a four-year sentence for a 1973 sexual offense.

But despite Anderson's violent past and his history of mental illness — state parole records note that Anderson reported hearing voices and had uncontrollable urges — the Illinois Department of Corrections declined to ask a judge to have Anderson committed into a treatment program. The department instead placed him in a Near West Side halfway house over the objections of prosecutors who said it was highly likely he would commit another offense.

Anderson walked out of the halfway house on Aug. 7, 2009, cut off his electronic monitoring bracelet and, prosecutors said, sexually assaulted his first victim on Aug. 15 and two other women — all at knifepoint — over the next 17 days.

"They failed every step of the way to keep some type of restriction on him," Martin Dolan, an attorney for the three women, said Wednesday. The victims "always found it inconceivable that this type of guy who is so bad and had so much background and is so violent could just walk out the door," he said.

"He literally walked out the door and was missing for 12 days and nobody did a thing."

The women have filed a civil lawsuit against the state and St. Leonard's Ministries, the halfway house from which Anderson walked away. A trial could take place next year in Cook County Circuit Court, Dolan said.

Anderson, now 63, pleaded guilty Tuesday to the sexual assaults and was sentenced to 75 years in prison by Judge Charles Burns at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, a spokeswoman for the state's attorney's office said.

One of the women was 25 when she was sexually assaulted at knifepoint in a gangway in the 1700 block of West Cornelia Avenue after getting out of a cab, prosecutors said. Three days later, Anderson followed a 28-year-old woman into her building, restrained her with electrical tape and electrical cord and assaulted her.

He attacked another woman in much the same way on Sept. 1, 2009, pushing his way into her apartment and binding her wrists with electrical tape before attempting to sexually assault her, prosecutors said.

"They are women who are scarred for life," Dolan said. "They were brutally attacked, and that shouldn't have ever happened."